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Accolades

“This is good news for Massachusetts wine enthusiasts, who will now be able to purchase wines they currently don’t have access to,” said Robert Dwyer of Wellesley, who blogs about wine. “This is also good news for Massachusetts in general since it will mean new revenues.”

"Robert P. Dwyer of Wellesley, who blogs about wine at thewww.wellesleywinepress.com, calls the state’s liquor laws bizarre and favors a wider availability of wine. For consumers, it would be more convenient to be able to buy wine at a supermarket while shopping for food, he said."

“You have this strange exclusion of wine, which in Europe is considered a grocery item,” said Mr. Dwyer. “Here it’s considered the demon rum.”

"trying to predict the annual Wine of the Year is a popular parlor game among enophiles. This year, blogger Wellesley Wine Press held a contest, with New York wine retailer Grapes the Wine Co. awarding a prize of a Kindle Fire e-reader to the first commenter to correctly guess this year's top wine before it was announced. Unfiltered was impressed with the number of Top 10 wines prognosticated by Wellesley's readers. "Senelwine" guessed Château de St.-Cosme Gigondas 2009, our No. 10 wine, "Mike M" guessed Quinta do Vallado Touriga Nacional Douro 2008, our No. 7 wine, "James Z" guessed Baer Ursa Columbia Valley 2008, our No. 6 wine, and "RichardPF" nailed it, winning the Kindle, and the respect of his wine-loving peers. Looks like Wellesley's readers know their wine."

The Chicago Tribune's Bill Daley mentioned the site in Rosé: A wine for more seasons. I said "For me, they're like pumpkin spice coffee drinks: best enjoyed early in the season". Bill alsogave the site a shout-out for a piece the Capitol Case Clubcontributed about restaurant wine service. I thought it was a great example of how print wine writers can effectively engage wine bloggers.

I submitted a piece on Shady Shelf Talkers to Palate Press that was published in its inaugural edition.

This site has been ranked as high as the #1 on PostRank. PostRank dynamically ranks the "influence" of blogs and individual posts within each blog. Read more about how PostRank works in an interview I did with them here. Have a look at this picture from a high water mark for the WWP:

And even though Roger Clemens stabs his radio with a syringe whenever he hears us say it, this is NPR: National Public Radio."

The Boston Globe's website has been linking to my recent entries as part of their expanded local coverage includingWellesley. I truly appreciate that as it has driven a lot of local traffic to this site.

It was really nice of Thomas Matthews, Executive Editor of Wine Spectator to leave a comment and then check back and answer some questions I had. Awesome guy! Check it out here. And here.

Thanks to The Boston Globe for including The Wellesley Wine Press in their list of local blogs in the Food & Drink section. Check it out here.

The Wellesley Wine Press was just added tohttp://wine.alltop.com. Alltop is an interesting topical take on sorting through the best sites on the Internet- check it out and see which sites are listed for topics you're most interested in.

Monday, December 27, 2010

About a month ago Wine.com did a $30 for $60 deal with Living Social. They're now doing what appears to be the same deal with Groupon. I have to say, I wasn't thrilled with the way the Living Social deal was structured and I let Wine.com know about it on Twitter.

There were three aspects of the deal I didn't like:

First is that the $60 Groupon can't be applied towards shipping costs. To Massachusetts, it costs $12.95 to ship the first bottle so at minimum you end up spending $42.95 for $60 worth of wine. That effectively makes the deal $30 for a $17.95 discount which is a lot less compelling than $30 for $60.

Second, the voucher isn't a gift card. It's a discount code. This is significant because Wine.com only allows you to enter one promotional code per order. So say for example Wine.com is running a 1 cent shipping on $99 promotion - you can't stack that promotional code with the Groupon offer so you end up having to choose one or the other and the fully loaded cost of the wine shipped to your house isn't a very good deal.

Third, with the Living Social deal anyway, the promotional code didn't trigger until the total value of the products in your cart was $59 or more. This seems incorrect to me. Any product total of $60 or less should be free and any total over that should be reduced by $60. The way it was structured seemed to encourage overshoot.

In total, the deal created a situation where it was impossible to achieve a 50% discount -and- you ended up being forced to spend more than the cost of the voucher. When I buy a Groupon for a restaurant I can always choose to spend slightly less than the value of the voucher so I don't end up spending more on the deal than the voucher cost me. But with this deal that isn't possible and that doesn't feel right to me.

All of that said, I'm going to take advantage of this offer too. Why? Well, they had a good deal last week on their Steward-Ship program where you could get holiday gift baskets shipped for free if you bought into the Steward-Ship program for $25 (regularly $49). This program is similar to Amazon Prime (which I'm a huge fan of and almost anyone can try for free with Amazon Mom - check it out) in that it gives you free shipping on any order for a year. But, a unique aspect of Steward-Ship is that it can be combined with other discount offers. So say for example Wine.com offers 15% off 12 bottles. You could then buy a bottle of 2008 Caymus for $50.99 shipped free. And coming January 1st, 2011 to Massachusetts there's no tax on wine. A bottle of Caymus shipped to your doorstep in Massachusetts for $50.99 fully loaded? That's a pretty good deal.

Still, I'm not thrilled about having to read the fine print and fight so hard to get a good deal on wine.